While working on some code for the FIRST team that I’m on, I had decided we were going to need PID control for some portions of our robot. Unfortunately, I have not done a lot of this stuff.. I took a control systems theory class in college, but I never quite saw the value of it at the time (which, I’ve come around now that I’ve seen some practical applications). So, to understand how it works more, I created this spreadsheet with adjustable P/I/D parameters.  I found this to be a useful tool in understanding the output of a PID control system.

Of course, its strictly an ideal model and not particularly realistic (try setting the P parameter to 1)… but its primarily useful for getting that basic understanding. Theres a number of ways it could be improved… feel free to improve it. 🙂

Download the PID spreadsheet

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